Ainslie's 2010

The TeamOrigin skipper looks ahead to this season

Ben Ainslie was looking relaxed at London Boat Show on Friday. Just before Christmas the Ainslies had their first holiday en masse as a family, which we share with you for no other reason than it is a sweet image picturing Ben, father Roddy (himself an ex-Whitbread sailor) and brother-in-law ISAF Secretary General Jerome Pels on board a charter boat in the BVI.

Back to business and the focus for Ainslie this year is of course TeamOrigin and until such time as February comes and goes and there is some clarity over the 34th America’s Cup, this means LV Trophy regattas and a new TP52 to campaign on the Audi MedCup circuit.

In 2010 the LV Trophy visits La Maddelena (off Sardinia) over May-June, with the other events planned for later in the year now up in the air (Newport, RI in August is not happening while and Hong Kong in November now looks like it may take place in January 2011). To fill the gap there remains the possibility of an LV Trophy regatta in the UK over August-September if the stars align correctly (more on this next week).

But first up is the Louis Vuitton Trophy Auckland over 7-21 March. This event is now the third in a local triple bill taking place in Auckland, starting, over 2-6 March, with the Omega Auckland Match Race Regatta, effectively the New Zealand Match Racing Nationals. This Ainslie has competed in before during his tenure at Team New Zealand and will do so again in March, although the main focus will be on the LV Trophy Auckland.

"It will be good to get back racing and move things on from Nice," he says. "It should be a bit breezier than Nice so the crewwork will come back into it."

In Auckland, TeamOrigin won’t have the distraction of all the shore-side preparation that they took on for Nice in November, as this is all being handled by Emirates Team NZ. Otherwise there will be a few personnel changes in the sailing team with a now married Matt Cornwell rejoining Matt Mitchell on the bow, while Argentinian Santiago Lange, the Athens and Beijing Tornado bronze medallist, will be replacing Rob Greenhalgh on the traveller and up the rig. "He works with Juan in the design office as well, so it is good to have that link on the boat as well," says Ainslie, who describes Lange’s role as ‘co-ordinator’.



Lange has been heavily involved with the build of the new TeamOrigin TP52. This currently in build at Salthouse Marine in Auckland and there is the possibility that the crew might get to sail it before it goes on to the ship to Europe. "There are two scenarios according to when the build is finished - whether we sail it there or it gets shipped straight away," says Ainslie. "The first MedCup event is in May, so it is reasonably fine - about two and a half weeks."

We’ll have to wait to see what the boat is like. "The boat is quite aggressive - as you would expect with Juan [Kouyoumdjian]. He has put a lot of effort into it. It has been a great process. Part of the reason why we did it is to get that relationship going."
Ainslie has been part of the sailing team interface with the designers as has Iain Percy, Mike Sanderson, along with some of the trimmers and the bow team in terms of deck layout, although, as Ainslie observes, the TP52s are becoming pretty similar now in this respect. "We had a good discussion about the conditions we wanted to be quick in and upwind and downwind trade-offs. Hopefully it will be a good all-round boat and not just a heavy air reaching rocket."

How is he at the all-important sailor-designer interface? "It is obviously important for the future. It is great working with Juan. He is a real sailor’s designer, a bit like Clay Oliver. He likes talking about it from the sailor’s perspective, as well as the technical side. I enjoy working with him. I obviously don’t have an engineering background like people like Russell [Coutts], who has always been very strong and is now on America’s Cup number six. My rate of learning has increased. We have pretty open conversations. No question is too small to be asked. But obviously Iain has worked a lot with Juan on the Star and Juan has worked with Moose [Mike Sanderson] on the Volvo Ocean Race. So we have a lot of technically-minded sailors on the team, which I think is great."

As to the Audi MedCup Ainslie says: "I am looking forward to it. I’m glad that there are still quite a few of the top teams sticking to it this season." He hasn’t sailed on it before – the last time he raced on a TP52 was with Ian Walker on board Patches in Porto Rotundo a few years ago. "Hopefully we’ll give Team New Zealand a race, but that light air Med stuff is always tricky."



Beyond the LV Trophies and the Audi MedCup, Ainslie also plans on shoehorning in more events on the World Match Racing Tour. Assuming invitations are forthcoming, he hopes to compete at the Tour events in Marseille, Portugal, St Moritz, Sweden and the Monsoon Cup. "The main focus is the MedCup and the Louis Vuitton circuit and then whatever match racing fits in around that. At the moment there are a few clashes. It’s good to keep your hand in and for the rule situations and close boat on boat stuff."

And this presumably leaves absolutely no time for the Finn? Not so, says Ainslie. "I did a bit of training before Christmas, which was really refreshing. Sid [coach, David Howlett] has been working hard getting some new kit together, which has been good to try out. He loves tweaking away. We did a day on 5 January before it started snowing! We’ll try and do some throughout the year as and when. And maybe I’ll do Sail for Gold regatta. The only issue with the TP is that my weight has got to stay down a bit, so I’m not going to be at Finn weight this year."

Unfortunately a clash of dates means that Ainslie once again won’t be able to compete at the Finn Gold Cup. "It’s a shame, because San Francisco would be awesome. So I’ll have to leave it to the boys and see how they get on."

On 8 February obviously the 33rd America’s Cup gets underway and Ainslie seems to have mixed feeling about this - not wholly supportive of an event that has scuppered several America’s Cup teams, while the two extreme multihulls competing in it are fascinating from the technical standpoint. "I just hope whoever wins takes it on and gets on with it. I might go down, I haven’t decided to be honest. It will be interesting to see it unravel or the first half an hour of the first race!"

So who’s his money on? "I don’t know. At first I thought Alinghi had got it right with the cat, but then the solid wing... but I don’t know how much power you need to generate on a multihull once you’ve reached your max righting moment. I think they have both done an incredibly good job. It is fascinating what they have come up with. They are a real feat of engineering. But it would be nice to get it all wrapped up finally."

As to the 34th America’s Cup Ainslie would prefer a big monohull: "Certainly not multihulls - I think that would be a real shame. The proposals they had before - I thought the AC90 was along the right lines. I’ve raced on Alfa Romeo against Wild Oats at a couple of Maxi Worlds and those sorts of events [he was also on board Alfa for the Transpac last year] and those boats are evenly matched and it was great racing and they are fast and exciting. Maybe not with a canting keel - I don’t think that is ideal. It depends upon the depth of the harbours - maybe greater draft? Something along those lines would be great and you’d still be reasonably close match racing, in slightly faster more exciting boats. I think multihulls – the boats would be amazing, but they would be miles apart.

"Obviously a new rule will open up much greater differences than we’ve seen in the past between the guys who’ve got it right and those who haven’t. So there’ll be greater variances and that will provide added excitement for the true die hard America’s Cup fans. There will be a bit more to talk about."